To the Editor:
The left is decrying the Republican majority's reluctance to hold hearings on President Barack Obama's judicial nominee, Merrick Garland.
The Constitution clearly gives the Senate the prerogative to decline confirmation of a nominee. There is nothing unprecedented about this. While in the Senate, Hillary Clinton in 2005 stated, "I believe this is one of the most important roles that the Senate plays. This, after all, is in the Constitution. We are asked to give advice and consent or to deny advice and consent."
Not to be outdone in 2005, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid opined that the Constitution does not say that "the Senate has a duty to give presidential nominees a vote."
Democrat Sen. Schumer argued in July 2007 that the then-Democrat majority Senate should not approve a Bush Supreme Court nominee, with which it had strong disagreements. That was 18 months before the end of G.W. Bush's second term; we are now nine months away from the end of Obama's second term.
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In 1992, Democrat Sen. Joe Biden said that the president should not name a nominee until after the November election. As the president's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, once said, "The chickens have come home to roost."
Linda D. Schauer
state director
Concerned Women for America of South Dakota
Leola
